In recent years, as a member that detects a contact by a user, an electronic device with a touch panel has been widely used to the information equipment such as mobile terminals like mobile phones, tablet-type PCs, calculators and ticket vending machines, home appliances such as microwaves, TV sets and lighting equipment, and industrial equipment (FA equipment).
As such a touch panel, various types such as a resistive film type, a capacitive type and an optical type are known. However, any types of touch panel are used to detect operation by a finger or a stylus pen, and even if a touch panel is touched, the touch panel itself is not physically displaced like a push button switch. Thus, even if a user operates the touch panel, he/she cannot obtain a feedback to the operation.
Thus, a feedback method by which, when operation on the touch panel is detected, a vibration is generated has been suggested (see Patent Literature 1). The input apparatus described in Patent Literature 1 includes a pressure detector (load detector), and is configured such that the pressure detector detects a pressure by the operation on the touch panel. In such a configuration, when a detected pressure satisfies a predetermined standard (for providing a tactile sensation), a vibrator is driven to vibrate the touch panel, thereby providing a tactile sensation to a user's finger or the like. In addition, in that case, when the position where a contact is detected corresponds to a position of a predetermined object such as a key displayed on a display, a predetermined process such as execution of predetermined application software associated with the object may be performed.
Thus, when a user presses the touch panel intentionally, not lightly touches it, a tactile sensation is provided and a predetermined process is performed. Therefore, in this manner, an unintentional light touch on the touch panel by a user may not cause execution of unintentional process by a user or provision of a strange tactile sensation to a user.